And then she smiled
by Snowracer
Summary: A little story of what might have happened that day when Seth was killed, but never really died.  Please note: Contains mention of violence, death and adult themes. Minor coarse language.


The brilliance of Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC.  
>I own nothing, I just play with it.<p>

* * *

><p>There were only so many things a man could do in London on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, and Seth had tried them all at least a hundred times. Or so it seemed anyway. Besides, this particular afternoon the cocks in the cockfights had felt a bit tired; there was no available bear in the bear pits after last week's little incident; no public hangings were announced and both theatres were doing the same boring play where everyone died at the end. He could of course pay a visit to the establishments down by the quay, but truth be told: Seth had always felt a bit uneasy around the brothels. He was a breast man - an unfashionable taste in a time when everyone was supposed to look like a lace maker's bobbin. Nevertheless, he liked breasts; it was no use denying that. The problem was that he never knew what to do with the body and head attached to the breasts. This made him nervous, and when he got nervous he got unpleasant and that usually ended up with him sitting uncomfortably in the street mud with his clothes thrown over his head. Besides, all these activities required that a man had both time and money to spend. Seth had an abundance of time, but unfortunately the money was less plentiful these days.<p>

He looked down at his feet and felt miserable. The mud had soaked through his shoes hours ago. The shoes used to be very fine indeed, but nowadays beggars had better looking things on their feet. New ones would cost more than he cared to pay. He looked up at the grey skies where clouds and smoke mingled, and he sighed. Everything around him was just too wet and grey and brown to help his mood at all. He decided to go visit his money.

Seth's money had been safely tucked away behind a loose stone in a small church ever since he first required them. With one thing and another going on, no one took too much care of the churches anyway and consequently no one noticed if he went in there and rearranged the stones once in a while. The walk to the church took less than a quarter of an hour, half running and hunched against the rain. There were only two beggars sleeping in front of the altar screen when Seth entered the sanctum. No one was in the transept with the loose stone. Seth sneaked in there, darting suspicious looks around him. He removed the stone without making any noise at all. The leather pouch revealed in the hole was much too small for his liking. It had been filled once and used to have such a nice weight to it, he remembered while undoing the knots. Seth was not good at counting, but he knew one coin from the other. The silver he piled in the window-splay in the transept would not be enough to maintain the kind of life he had gotten used to lately. It had been stupid of him to try to replenish the piles by betting. He just was not made for betting, and he knew it.

There was always the option of getting a proper work, of course, but that would mean him making an effort, and he could not be bothered with that yet. A few months ago he had tried to make a career at court, but the trouble was that the people there already knew him for the creep he was. Admittedly, there were lots of creeps at court – but most of these creeps regained in position due to them being clever. Seth was many things, but clever he was not. He had been very sly one time, and that one time had been enough. The pouch filled with silver was concrete proof of that. Even Seth had enough sense to realize that it was improbable that Fortuna would ever smile at him like that again.

Luck had very little part in Seth's life – or if it had, he had never noticed. He was the sixth child in a family that used to be noble and perhaps still was– only noble in a penniless way. His father had worked for a much nobler – and much richer – man when he was young. When Seth was born and there was no food left to feed this sixth child, his father arranged for him to be placed with the nobler man. That meant that Seth had been in service since the age of four. To be a page and a servant suited his disposition well. He was naturally servile and ready to take orders. Some people are leaders, some are followers. Seth was most definitely a follower. The nobler man travelled around Europe on missions for the Majesty and trailing along behind him was Seth.

So it was for 20 years. When the nobler man died, Seth followed his son for another fourteen years. He was an excellent servant. He never made any questions, had opinions or refusals. He did was he was told. However, one day he realized that he was almost forty years of age. He was an old man and he had nothing to prove that he had ever lived. He had never had a day off to do what he pleased. All these little chores he had done over the years had left nothing tangible for anyone to remember him by. This awoke a sense of bitterness in his little mind, and he cherished that bitterness. It was the first true feeling he could remember having. And then Fortuna smiled at him.

The smile was not obvious until he had blinked a few times. At first the smile looked exactly like a pair of buttocks. His master's buttocks. The logical reason for this was that the smile manifested itself in the form of the actual buttocks of his actual master. Seth had walked in on those buttocks in a situation where they should not be, according to law and convenience. For the first time in his life Seth thought quickly. This quick though together with the fear in the two men facing potential hanging and reclaiming of land, made Seth a very wealthy man. His brains, fuel by adrenaline and silver, also decided that it was a good idea to leave the Continent as soon as humanly possible and go back to his native England before anyone realized that it was easier to shut him up for good than to fill his mouth with money.

Since then he had been ambling along the streets of London, taking part in all kinds of pleasures and leisures. It had indeed been pleasant, but costly. Seth ran his thumb over the diminished pile of cold silver. At last he decided that although there was not enough in the pile to keep this lifestyle going for ever, there was indeed enough there for him to buy a decent bottle of wine. He was sick and tired of the bitter piss they called wine in this country. He had drunk the wine of the Mediterranean and he knew what wine was supposed to taste like. A bottle of the proper stuff would rob him of some more of the precious silver, but so be it. He needed a full bodied wine in this weather.

Darkness had nearly fallen while Seth was in the church. The wine merchant he was looking for had his establishment in a discreet corner down by the quays. By the time Seth was close enough to smell the quays; it was too dark for him to see them. The narrow alleys in these parts shut out the last remains of daylight while he tried to remember his way. To strengthen his spirits he resorted to a few beers that were even worse than the English wine. This did, however, nothing to strengthen his sense of direction. Before long he was helplessly lost in the dark maze of alleys and paths.

The brightly lit square that fell out of a door onto the muddy alley was almost a shock to his eyes when he stumbled upon it. It took him two blinks before he saw the old woman sitting on a stool in the doorway, stooped over the mending of a doublet. It took him another blink before he saw the other person sitting on a crate on the other side of the narrow alley. It was a woman dressed like a madam at a brothel. Her curls fell over her shoulders down to the edge of a shiny corset. She was sitting comfortably on the crate, smoking a long clay pipe while watching the old woman. Her tiny feet dangled four inch over the mud. Seth had seen dwarves at court. They always cracked him up with their coarse language and shenanigans. Once, in Spain, he had watched a dwarf hurl profanities at the king until he was chased away by a pack of hounds. Seth had never laughed so much in his life. Even now, it was enough with a mere glimpse of a dwarf for him to crack a smile. When he saw this tiny woman on the crate, he pointed at her and burst into laughter.

At the sound of Seth's laughter, the person on the crate turned around to face him. Seth choked on a giggle when he saw – even in this twilight – that it was not a dwarf, nor a grown woman. It was a child, of no more than eight or nine years. For some reason Seth got dumbfounded. The child knocked out her pipe on the side of the crate and jumped to the ground. The old woman in the doorway sighed and looked at the dark skies, as if she asked the Heavens for some support. Seth was rooted to the ground. Why he stood there like he was dug into the smelly mud he did not know. It was like his brain had too much work to do to fit the face of a child onto this body, to find any time for moving or talking. Something with the child was wrong, but it was impossible to say what. She smiled sweetly and walked up to Seth like she had all the time in the world. The dimmed light in the passage could have played tricks, but Seth thought that the girl's eyes looked much older than her head. Or his head, come to think of that.

The girl stood right in front of him now.  
>"Please stoop down", she said politely.<br>There was absolutely no reason for him to actually do that, but somehow he did anyway. His body flexed at the waist, making him stand there with his hands dangling at knee's height. The girl put her tiny, tobacco smelling hands on each side of his face. She smiled, and that made Seth smile too.  
>"Hetty…"said the old woman in a parental tone of voice.<br>"Yes Gran", said the girl that appeared to be called Hetty, "I'm just having a look."  
>The look comprised of her leaning closer and sniffing his head. Seth had to stop a giggle. The girl sniffed around his shoulders and dwelled for a while at his throat before looking at him again.<br>"Try not to soil your dress again dear", the old woman said without looking up.  
>"Gran!" exclaimed Hetty indignantly "It is not like I'm eighty or something. I hardly ever spill anymore."<br>" You ruined your dress yesterday", Gran reminded her, "And it was really unnecessary. You did not have to rip that man's arm off. It will take me ages to stitch the sleeve back on."  
>"I do apologize", the child said without taking her eyes of Seth, "I shall refrain from ripping for all of next week."<br>Something finally bubbled to the surface in Seth's mind.  
>"What..?" he said.<br>Gran looked up from her work, only to measure Seth from head to foot.  
>"This one is poorly dressed, and he's too lean", she said and took up her needle again.<br>The girl smiled like someone that has got a wonderful secret. She rocked gently from one foot to the other.  
>"I do not think this is food, Gran", she said, "This might be a keeper."<br>The old woman sighed and looked at the ink black sky again.  
>"What are you going to do with them all?" she asked "They're not dolls, my love, the need feeding."<br>"Yes, I know…" Hetty replied, "But I like the stupid ones."  
>"What..?" managed Seth again.<br>"Of course, he might be helpful round the back", Gran admitted.  
>"Besides, I have the munchies," said Hetty, "You know how I get then…"<br>Gran chuckled quietly to herself while Hetty ran her thumb gently down Seth's throat.  
>"Do not worry, dear", she said softly, "It will only hurt for a while."<br>Then she smiled with all her pretty teeth.

When Seth awoke the next morning, he was laying on his back in the mud by the river. He was soaked, sore and chilled to the bone. He groaned and dared a look at the sky. The pale light of the first hours turned his eyeballs inside out. Even so, the eyeballs were not his biggest problem - no matter how much they hurt. The real problem was his nose and its position so close to the river. The smell was like a living entity trying to strangle him. Even in his dreams this awful smell had haunted him. Not that it made much difference to the ambiance of the dreams: Seth had had a few nightmares in his day, but none as bad as this one. The mere memory made him want to scream. He tried to convince his body to accept a sitting position. A running position, away from the river, would have been preferable, but he felt the limitations at once. Running was not on the agenda for a while.

While sitting did free him of some of the cold mud, it also made his head swim and his belly rumble. Before he could stop it, he threw up all over himself. If things had not been bad enough already, they rapidly became worse: there was blood in his vomit. He had tried not to look at the sorry mess, but it was hard not to see the blood. Seth was the last one to claim any kind of medical knowledge, but he knew that blood had nothing to do in a healthy vomit. "Pestilence" was the first word that uninvited visited his empty brain.

"Do not worry, most of it is still inside you," said a voice from behind him.  
>Seth tried to spin around, only to fall flat in the mud. He peered through the painful light and caught sight of a small person sitting on a big stone, an arm's length away.<br>"You!" he hissed between teeth that seemed to itch.  
>"Yes, me!" said Hetty happily.<br>"Go away! Leave me alone!" Seth screamed over the pounding in his head.  
>The girl smiled and jumped off the stone with her skirt bobbing around her. Daintily she started to walk away from the writhing man on the ground.<br>"What? You can't just go!" he wailed after her.  
>The girl stopped and gave him a bemused look over her shoulder.<br>"You just told me to."  
>"Well, I didn't think you would actually gonna do it!" he said indignantly.<br>The girl smiled and flicked her curls.  
>"You know where to find me", she said and left skipping down the street.<p>

Seth was not at all sure that he knew where to find her, but he was sure as Hell that he did not want to do it very soon. The girl scared the living daylight out of him. He lay for bit longer on the riverbank, trying to muster some strength and piece together his memories of the previous night. After his visit to the church everything seemed a bit hazy. Through this haziness and the throbbing of his aching body a resolution managed to manifest itself: he was done with this miserable London. He was going to follow the Thames upriver to Oxford, find himself a nice barmaid that was preferably bustier and less cynical than the ones here, and settle down. He might even start his own wine trading business. No more fog, no more stinky mud and no more scary little girls. He exclaimed a defiant "Ha!" at the world in general, but the heroic gesture ended up like a mute lip movement due to lack of out coming air. A bit surprised he drew a deep breath and nearly choked on the renewed smell of foul river. When was the last time he drew a breath? A sharp stab of panic ran through him. No! He was not going to sit here in the mud and feel bad. He clambered to his feet and managed to stay upright. "First the money, then Oxford, then busty barmaid, then wine", he told himself to gain courage.

As it turned out, he had woken up on the river bank behind the dark maze of alleys. He had only a small clue as to where he was and the church with his money seemed agonizingly far off. Downcast he started to stagger along the lanes, caked in cold mud and squinting against the increasing daylight. He tried to remember breathing. Had it ever been this hard before? Somewhere in the back of his mind he thought he remembered that breathing used to take care of itself.

At the corner of two alleys he found a man dusting off an old placard. He grabbed him by the arm to get his attention. The man turned around, looked at his miserable appearance and wrinkled his nose.  
>"What?" he said.<br>Seth named the church – twice to be sure. Concentrating on the breathing took up too much time for him to be very articulate. The man looked at him again, and then he pointed along the lane, to the south.  
>"Thanks", managed Seth.<br>"It's what I do", the man replied and resumed his business with the placard.

It took him the best part of an hour to drag himself to the church gates. His body seemed to have its own agenda in which he himself was not involved. Seth was sure that he had caught the plague. Everything around him was too bright, too smelly, too loud. It was a great relief to reach the stone stairs and convince aching legs to climb them. It was still too early for the gates to be open, so he put his hands against the nearest one and pushed. It was the single most painful thing he had ever done. His skin felt like it had caught fire, his eyeballs exploded, his teeth screamed. Seth fell down the stairs in pure shock.

He laid at the bottom of the stairs, stunned, when a woman bent over him.  
>"You alright, sweetie?" she said "Only, you've got blood…"<br>Seth spun around and snarled at her. There was no better word to describe it: he actually snarled like an animal. He flashed his teeth and felt his eyes change. How the eyes changed he did not know, but he could feel something happening. A touch of an itch, and then the world changed colour and everything stood out in clear contrast. He could see the woman's strong perfume; he could see things move underneath her skin. This startled him, but it clearly scared the shit out of her. The poor Winchester Goose ran screaming down the street, lifting her skirts to run faster like her life depended on how fast she could get away from Seth.

This was too much. He was not in a mood for this. He made his way up the stairs again and made a new try with the gate. This time the pain made him unconscious.

Seth made his way back to Hetty's house much faster than he would have thought. Even though he was still confused, he had a new sense of direction that he had never had before. He did not bother with the breathing anymore, it took too much effort and only resulted in the intake of fragrances that he did not care about. His belly turned at every move, sending needles of pain through every limb.

Hetty's house turned out to be bigger than he had noticed in the dark. It had two stories and a dozen windows covered with shutters. The back door was still open, revealing a flag stoned kitchen within. He could see the old woman from yesterday doing some chores by a work bench. Without slowing down he went right through the door – and failed miserably. It was like walking into a very robust piece of glass. He ended up on his rump on the threshold. The old woman turned around when she heard him hitting the ground.  
>"Ah! There you are, dear", she said before raising her voice and calling "Hetty? Your friend is here!"<br>Seth got up and did a new attempt. He could still not press himself through the open door. He could see everything within, but he could not reach it. The old woman looked slightly amused before she went back to greasing a shoe. She had a long row of polished shoes before her on the bench, Seth noticed. He lifted his gaze and saw dozens of doubles and jerkins hanging neatly from rafters in the ceiling. There were also a few shirts and gowns, and a pile of unsorted garments on the floor.

He stood there, pressing himself against the impossibly thick air, when Hetty entered the room with a handkerchief, dabbing at the corners of her mouth. She smiled when she saw Seth.  
>"Gran!" she said "Don't let him stand there like a fool!"<br>Gran hardly took her eyes of the polished shoe.  
>"Please come in, little fellow" she said.<br>Seth immediately fell flat on his face on the kitchen floor. Hetty laughed at him while she went over to the table and sat down on a chair. She indicated to Seth that he should sit opposite her. He did, but only because he could not come up with anything more defiant to do.  
>"What did you do to me yesterday?" he hissed, as angrily as he could.<br>"I killed you", said Hetty simply while twisting a curl between her fingers.  
>"Lay off!" Seth spit.<br>"No really. I did," she said with a honest look on her little face.  
>"Why?" he managed after some confused thought.<br>She shrugged and picked up a new curl.  
>"I liked you," she said, "I needed someone my own age".<br>Seth had to think for a while longer. The rumble of his belly made this very difficult.  
>"I can't be dead", he said at last, "I'm still moving about."<br>Hetty laughed, and even Gran volunteered a chuckle.  
>"I killed you, but that doesn't mean that you're dead", the girl said, "You're more like...undead."<br>Seth looked completely blank, which matched his thoughts perfectly. Hetty sighed.  
>"Look, you didn't die and now you never have to be afraid again. Now there's nothing out there that is more frightening than you are."<p>

Seth did still not understand. There were words in Hetty's sentence that demanded too much attention for the rest to sink in.  
>"When I died..." he started.<br>"Yes..?" Hetty prompted.  
>"What were my final words?"<br>Now Hetty gave him the blank stare. Gran chuckled again.  
>"I believe," she said slowly and deliberately, "that is was '<em>hnnnngh<em>'."

Since everything had turned mad, Seth found it safest to focus on the important things.  
>"I couldn't get my money", he said like a whiny child.<br>"Where was it?" Hetty asked with something of an interest. Seth told her.  
>"Ah. Gran can get them for you."<br>"No she bloody cannot! It's my money!" he burst out.  
>"Thing is," Hetty said with the patience of an angel, "You can never enter a church again. Nor can you enter the house of any living human without being invited."<br>"Why? That's daft, that is."  
>"I don't know. It's just the way it is."<br>A sudden loud "bump" from upstairs made them both startle and look at the ceiling. When Seth lowered his eyes again he caught sight of a basket filled with hair, which stood on the table. He made a disgusted grimace.  
>"What is this place!" he asked a smiling Hetty.<br>"It is what people use to refer to as a 'house of bad repute'," she said happily before catching sight of Seth's blank stare, "It's a brothel. Mainly. Only some costumers never leave through the front door. They leave via the river. But don't worry: Gran makes sure that nothing useful gets washed out to sea. She's very...thorough."  
>Gran chuckled again and Seth made a face.<br>"Is she really your Gran?" he asked.  
>Both women laughed at him. If he could blush, he would have done it.<br>"No. She's not my Gran. I saved her once when she was a girl, and then I kept her. It's always useful to have a human around. It saves me money I don't have to spend on locks, for one thing."

At this moment another woman entered the room. At first she just stuck her head around the door frame to the adjacent room and called at Gran.  
>"Oi! I've got another one for you here, hon."<br>Gran looked up with a keen look on her face, dried her hands on her apron and scuttled away. Hetty made a beckoning gesture at the figure in the doorway.  
>"Rosie!" she called, "Come and meet our new friend."<p>

The woman called Rosie strolled over to the table and stood beside Hetty. The girl put her arm fondly around her waist. They both looked closely at Seth.  
>"He's not Irish, is he?" Rosie asked, "I don't do Irish. Unless they're good enough to eat, and this one clearly isn't."<br>Seth did not hear the insult. He was completely occupied with the task of staring at Rosie's very full bosom.  
>"I don't think he's Irish. Are you, pet?"<br>"Seth. My name is Seth", Seth answered.  
>"How ill-mannered of me," Hetty said while quenching a giggle, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Hetty. You can call me... Madam Hetty. This is Rosie."<p>

This got no response whatsoever, and the two girls looked at each other. Seth's gaze was still hard at work, contemplating the view in front of Rosie.  
>"And you kept this one, why?" said the object of his stare.<br>"Rosie dear, be nice", Hetty said patiently, "Now, I suggest that you take our new friend down to the theatres to feed".  
>This caught Seth's attention.<br>"Not the theatres," he said, "They're dead boring."  
>Rosie seemed to swell, which only made the view more interesting.<br>"What..?" she pressed out between clenched teeth.  
>"They're doing a really boring thing where everyone dies all over the place. They ought to have someone better writing for them... That Marlow chap is good."<br>To his surprise, a fist shot out from Rosie and hit him square in the face.  
>"Ouch!" he screamed.<br>"Rosie! That was unnecessary!" Hetty rebuked.  
>"He insulted my kinsman," Rosie sulked.<br>"Yes. But I think that Willy is old enough to fend for himself, don't you?"  
>Rosie nodded meekly, cast down by the child's reprimand. This gave Seth some bravado. He might have been confused and aching from head to foot, but delivering a nasty comment always made him feel a bit better.<br>"The playwright is your kinsman, is he? Then tell him that the last one they did – the one with the soppy lovers – was the silliest thing I've seen," he smirked.

This time Rosie knocked him out cold. Hetty chided her about it for a bit, but Seth did not mind.  
>To sleep was exactly what he needed right now.<br>To sleep, perchance to dream.  
>And when he woke up, everything would have turned back to normal again.<p>

He was wrong, of course.


End file.
